The show took place at the Neues Museum in Berlin
Last June, Max Mara’s creative director Ian Griffith’s invited the congregated fashion press to see with their own eyes the impressive modern art collection that fills his headquarters in Reggio Emilia, a small town near Bologna. Accumulated by its founder Achille Maramotti, the museum holds masterpieces by the likes of Francis Bacon, Basquiat and Julian Schnabel, as well as Griffiths’ personal favourite, Thought Plane Assembly 1 by Richmond Burton. Like the late Maramotti, who hired him 32 years ago, Griffiths is a modernism aficionado, who could only have the fondest affection for the art and architecture of 20th century Berlin. On Monday evening, the designer – who studied architecture at Manchester University in the 1980s – held his Max Mara resort show on the cement and marble staircase erected by David Chipperfield within the 19th century brick-walled hall of the Neues Museum, destroyed in World War II and brought back to life by the British architect in 2009.
Creative director Ian Griffiths is a lifelong fan of Berlin
At 57, the exquisitely Savile Row-clad Ian Griffiths doesn’t give it away but in the 1980s he was a bona fide club kid. For evidence, simply stalk his Instagram profile @ian_griffiths1 where, under the series caption “When I was a club kid”, the designer intermittently posts flashbacks to the brilliant looks he’d wear to The Hacienda. Back then, he “dreamt of all things Berlin,” he wrote in one such caption Friday. “Bauhaus, Bowie, Cabaret.” His resort collection was inspired by all of the above as well as the work of Daniel Liebeskind, the look of Ian Curtis of Joy Division, and the spirit of Griffiths’ number one heroine Marlene Dietrich.
Click Here: cheap pandora Rings
The experience epitomised the attitude of Berlin
“Life is a cabaret, old chum,” Liza Minelli sang in the musical version of Christopher Isherwood’s . The escapism of the Weimar Republic, where the book takes place, bore unnerving similarities to our current socio-political climate where the anti-conformist waves are contrasted by increasingly conservative tendencies. And so, on the eve of his Max Mara show, Griffiths invited his guests to Clärchens Ballhaus where Ute Lemper put on a ravishing performance in tribute to Marlene Dietrich – who started her career during the Weimar Republic – reminding us of the escapist debauchery that once filled the political cauldron of Berlin, and still does in present-day clubs like Berghain. “I’ve always worshipped Marlene Dietrich,” Griffiths said after the show. “She was such a courageous individual and very similar to David Bowie. They both had that enigmatic gender fluidity. Marlene wore a men’s suit in the 1930s when she was one of the highest paid actresses in the world. It’s very close to Max Mara: the idea of playing with masculino and feminino. We’ve always done it.”
And Marlene Dietrich appeared in the collection, too
Ian Griffiths infused his Max Mara modernism with the razor-sharp glamour of Marlene Dietrich and David Bowie, epitomised in the flared tailoring worn to perfection by the icons, who both spent parts of their lives in Berlin. Griffiths merged it with elements represented in Neues Museum’s ancient collections, from Egyptian splendour to the Bronze Age, exemplified in jewellery designed by Reema Pachachi. A so-called Berlin Coat fashioned in the style of Dietrich was adorned with embellishment crafted by Meissen – the German porcelain factory – whose trademark snowball blossoms inspired the collection. Ute Lemper, who performed as Dietrich the night before, even walked the show, along with Carolyn Murphy, who you might call a contemporary take on the German goddess.
The show commemorated the 30th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall
For David Bowie mega-fan Ian Griffiths, his memories of Berlin are synonymous with the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Before the world marks the 30th anniversary of the momentous event on November 9, the designer kicked off the celebrations with a reminder of a time when music was literally changing the world. Two years before the borders were finally opened between East and West Berlin, Bowie performed a concert close to the Wall intended for both sides to experience. The concert led to East Berlin riots, fuelling the demand to “tear down this wall,” as Reagan told Gorbachev in a speech six days later. “Thank you for helping to bring down the wall,” the Germain Foreign Office tweeted when Bowie died in 2016.
This article originally appeared on Vogue.co.uk.